


Debut

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 17:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13908684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: May 2008. Taemin will debut in a week.





	Debut

Taemin is late.

They got out of work at three in the morning last night, got home at four and Jingi hyung kept him up until five, and he slept through Minho hyung’s alarm, and nobody else bothered to get him up, so yeah, he’s late. He hasn’t worn his uniform in so long that it feels like a straightjacket, stiff and suffocating, and he doesn’t have time, and somebody is in the bathroom, but he feels so disgusting he pushes past Kibum hyung and washes his face in the kitchen sink.

His backpack slides down his back and wumps him on the head, and then Kibum hyung hooks a finger into the strap and hauls him upright, and Taemin is totally off balance now, getting more and more out of sync with the morning he should have had.

When he turns around, Jonghyun hyung is right there, fresh from the shower but still dressed in his pajamas from last night.

“Minho hyung?” Taemin asks dumbly. They go to different schools but when their schedules match, they usually go as far as the subway together.

“He already left,” Jonghyun hyung informs him, passing by him to sit at the table. He surveys the assembled army of banchan, chopsticks poised, and grins up at Kibum hyung. “Wow, Kibum-ah, who are you trying to impress? I know Ahjumma made all of it~”

Kibum hyung gets snippy, “I fried that, so don’t eat it,” and leans over to snatch Jonghyun hyung’s plate away, too late, because Jonghyun hyung just crams his egg into his mouth whole, trying to chew and not choke on his laugh. And Taemin doesn’t need to be here for this, but—“Hey, Taemin-ah, wait.”

“I’m late,” Taemin says.

“So you’re late, you still have to eat,” Kibum hyung says, like that’s the end of it, and Taemin hates himself when he freezes and his eyes shoot over to Jonghyun hyung before he can even think.

“Where do you think you’re going when Kibum hyung made you breakfast?” Jonghyun hyung demands, like it’s an outrage, and maybe Taemin should rebel for real, but Kibum hyung’s hands are firm on his shoulders, and Jonghyun hyung gets tired of his own joke in half a second, gives him a real smile. “Come here, Taeminnie, it won’t make any difference at this point.”

Taemin sits, slings his backpack off onto the floor and stuffs himself instead, ignoring Jonghyun hyung when he tells him to slow down. He tries to ignore Jonghyun hyung’s hand when it comes up to pet his hair, too, fingertips brushing Taemin’s forehead through his bangs. Pretty soon Jonghyun hyung forgets it’s even there, sniggering with Kibum hyung over things Taemin isn’t supposed to get.

When Kibum hyung remembers Taemin exists, it’s just to ask him, smirking, “Is Jingi hyung still asleep?” and Jonghyun hyung laughs at whatever face Taemin is making. Taemin wastes a second wondering why it’s funny to them that Taemin has to roll Jingi hyung off him and climb over him just to get out of bed in the morning, and then he nods, and then he’s up and off, down the stairs and _out._

The early summer air feels so clean against his face, crisp and fresh and free, and it’s probably going to be really hot later, but right now it’s just perfect. With each breath Taemin feels a little better. 

He gets as far as the corner before he hears his name, and then Jonghyun hyung runs up to him, already flagging. Taemin doesn’t understand for a couple seconds, until Jonghyun hyung recovers enough to straighten, shove his backpack into his chest, say between gulps of breath, “You would have gone all the way to school without even realizing,” and, “Hyung saved your life,” and, “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“You saved my life, hyung,” Taemin says obediently, threading his arms through the straps and struggling to keep his face straight. He doesn’t get why Jonghyun hyung has no trouble singing through their choreo, but can’t even run one block without falling to pieces. 

“As long as you know,” Jonghyun hyung says, only slightly placated. He shakes a finger at Taemin. “You’re a problem, you can’t be left alone. Where would you be without me?”

Taemin stares into his face, doesn’t find anything that untwists his stomach. “I’ve made it this far on my own, though?”

“Oh, really? Then where was I the last three years? Now I’m curious to see how you remember certain things.” 

The words tumble out on that ragged laugh that says Jonghyun hyung is annoyed with him, and Taemin doesn’t want to deal with any of this right now, wonders if he should just give up and go back up, steal Jingi hyung’s bed if he’s still in Taemin’s. But Jonghyun hyung already knows he’s said too much, eyeing Taemin and gnawing on his lip and pretending he’s not bothered, and Taemin doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, why he’s just standing here.

All Jonghyun hyung has for him in the end is, “Anyway…things are different now.”

Taemin doesn’t know why he ducks his hand when it comes up to pet his hair again, why his stomach jumps when Jonghyun hyung frowns at him and then pulls him into the crook of his arm, pinches his cheek, why he wriggles away and puts as much sidewalk as he can between them. There’s not a lot he knows these days.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because Jonghyun hyung calls after him to wait. Taemin should be running but instead he slows down, shortens his stride to match Jonghyun hyung’s. It doesn’t make any difference at this point, like he said.

They walk to the subway together, busy streets and cloudless sky. Jonghyun hyung shoots glances at him that Taemin tries so hard not to see, trapped behind a group of salary men taking the long way to work. When they finally reach the station and break free, Taemin puts on a huge burst of speed, trips down the steps trying to burn off this restless feeling, but it doesn’t work, because Jonghyun hyung is still there when he gets to the bottom, and Taemin’s train isn’t.

“What’s with you, am I embarrassing you or something?” Jonghyun hyung tries.

“It’s not that,” Taemin blurts out, because he can see how it could be, looking at Jonghyun hyung with his ratty sweatpants and holey T-shirt, and he doesn’t want Jonghyun hyung to think he cares, in case that makes him care too. 

“Then it is something?” Jonghyun hyung catches his eyes, and Taemin wants to look away so badly, doesn’t know why even. “Are you tired? Is it Jingi hyung, do you want to switch beds with me?”

Jonghyun hyung doesn’t seem to sleep as it is. And it’s not that Jingi hyung takes over his bed every night, just that the nights he does it are bad. Just like the days where Jonghyun hyung eats up all Taemin’s alone time, and the ones where he gets to go back to the dorm and play video games, read manhwa, hang around with Kibum hyung while Taemin has to spend his time off doing more shit he doesn’t want to do.

“Should I drop out, too?” Taemin says, and immediately regrets it, because there’s no way Jonghyun hyung will take him seriously, and maybe if he does it’ll be worse.

“Then should I take responsibility for you?” Jonghyun hyung snorts, like Taemin is just following his example blindly, like Taemin can’t make his own choices, for his own reasons. He seems to realize that doesn’t go over well, though, because he changes tack, and promptly makes it worse. “Taeminnie, listen. If you’re just saying that because you don’t want to go to school right now, then you don’t have the right to decide for yourself.”

Taemin wishes there were one thing in his life he had control over. Just one thing. His train doesn’t come and doesn’t come and doesn’t come.

“What, you’re not going to look at me now?” Jonghyun hyung says, and Taemin gives him as little of his face as he can, waiting for this part of his day to be over. Jonghyun hyung persists, reaching up and tweaking his ear, hot pinch of pain. “Are you mad at me?”

“Hyung, you don’t have to wait with me,” Taemin says to the greasy shining floor. 

It’s cost Jonghyun hyung seven hundred won just to stand around down here for a while and have this stupid conversation and then head back.

And still, Jonghyun hyung takes too long, and his answer almost gets lost in the whir when the train bursts in on them, like it was always going to come. Taemin keeps it with him when he fights his way in, and takes it out later when he gets used to the crush of people, the perfume of the ahjumma at his shoulder, the eyes of the little girl who might be staring at him, both sides of someone else’s phone conversation in his ear.

 _I know that._

 

Come this Sunday, and with any luck, Taemin won’t be able to ride this train again.

It’s been a weird year. The five of them are debuting in a week, and Taemin doesn’t know if it feels like destiny, or if his life is totally out of his hands. If those two things are the same, maybe. Taemin has been a trainee since he was thirteen, he’s known Jonghyun hyung since around that time, met Kibum hyung a little later and Jingi hyung and Minho hyung a little after that, but there are so many other guys he’s known just as long, maybe just as well, and the first time he saw the four of them in one room was at the start of all this.

Even now, living with all of them, he’ll look at them and realize all over again that these are the people he’s going to spend his life with. And it’s still strange, only gets stranger the better he knows them. Kibum hyung takes forever in the shower, Minho hyung goes to bed early and gets up early and Taemin kind of hates him twice a day, Jingi hyung always eats Taemin’s snacks and then feels guilty and buys him another bag of the wrong flavor, and when it’s the five of them Jonghyun hyung never shuts up. And he doesn’t know what all this stuff is supposed to mean to him, if it’s supposed to get under his skin like this, if the stuff that goes on at home should matter as much as the things they’re trying to do together at work.

And then there’s the fact that any of this is happening to _him._ Taemin hasn’t been training for no reason, he hasn’t spent school nights practicing instead of sleeping and weekends with dance instructors instead of the friends he’s never had, for no reason. It’s just, the way it’s happened is so different from the way he’s always pictured it, that it’s making it hard to believe in what he’s doing. He wants to be a singer, and all he can do so far is dance. And he’s probably being dumb, but it feels like the company is taking the “so far” away from him. Like, he can’t sing. He can dance. The end.

Jonghyun hyung doesn’t see it that way. Taemin has only talked to him about it once, because of course the one time Taemin actually cried over it, Jonghyun hyung had to catch him at it, men’s bathroom in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of recording their mini. They’d taken away some of his lines in “Replay” with no explanation, and Taemin had let it get to him. And Jonghyun hyung had thrown an impromptu jealous fit over Taemin’s dance solo until Taemin couldn’t get the smile off his face, and then told him that it was just one song, just the beginning.

Taemin doesn’t know what to think about that. And things keep happening, and Taemin keeps on not knowing anything, and it’s probably going to keep being like that. 

 

Taemin spends his morning ignoring the glares of his classmates when he shows up late and the teacher doesn’t say anything, just waves him in impatiently, and then peering over at his desk mate’s book to figure out where they are, and then failing a quiz. When lunchtime rolls around, he puts his head down and closes his eyes and waits for it all to go away, for the air trapped by his arms to swelter and grow stale and become its own world.

He should have covered his ears instead, because they’re the problem, burning up with all kinds of things he doesn’t want to hear. 

“I heard he’s debuting soon. Then he won’t come here anymore.”

“Did you see the look on his face when he walked in? He thinks he can do whatever he wants, he thinks he’s a big deal already. I heard the teachers aren’t allowed to do anything to him, either.”

“Looking at him, it’s true that idols are nothing special up close.”

“Idol, as if. I bet his group flops~”

“I bet he’s lying. I bet he’s not even a trainee, do you think _he_ could be in the same company as my Siwon oppa?!”

“How can he be a singer when he can’t even talk.”

His mom has always said not to give people a reaction, that they’ll leave you alone once they find out they won’t get anything out of you, but that doesn’t seem to be working. His class knows by now he’s not going to do anything about it, and sometimes he thinks if he had it in him to go crazy, or cry, or something, maybe then they actually would stop. Maybe that’s not what they want, either. Maybe it’d be better for everyone if he weren’t here.

When the final bell rings ten million years later and he gets out the door, he walks straight into the noona that went through his phone a month ago, searching his contacts in vain for Super Junior members.

“Taemin oppa,” she says this time, and Taemin freezes for the few seconds it takes her to press something into his hand. “Don’t forget me when you’re famous, got it?”

He forgets until he’s on the train again and remembers to open his fists. The candy has gone tacky with heat, sticking to its plastic sheath, and it takes Taemin forever to thumb it out. It tastes red, and he leaves sticky fingerprints on everything he touches until he gets to the bathroom across the hall from the practice room, changes out of his uniform for good and scrubs the day off his face and hands.

 

When Taemin goes into the practice room, Jongin is there.

Taemin can’t remember how long it’s been since they last saw each other, or talked on the phone even, and the line of Jongin’s back squeezes his throat shut. It only lasts for a second, because Jongin doesn’t greet him, doesn’t turn down the music, keeps going, so normal it’s like no time has passed at all.

And when the song finishes, Jongin ends his day before it’s really begun, and goes through “Replay” with Taemin over and over and over. Taemin forgets about him slowly, entire being strung from beat to beat, and soon enough Jongin is just the hand that takes, then passes back the water bottle where there’ll be a microphone. He loses time until his muscles stop cooperating, the bottle slips through his fingers and water explodes between them, seeping into their sneakers. Taemin doesn’t need to look to know what face Jongin is making, but he does anyway.

Turns out it’s three in the morning, so they make a decision, toe off their shoes and peel off their socks and curl up on the floor. Taemin digs into his backpack for his uniform, wads his shirt under his head and uses his blazer as a blanket. Jongin follows suit next to him.

Taemin has stayed the night alone plenty of times, but Jongin never has without him, and Taemin knows it’s because it unsettles him. The first time they’d slept together in here, the alarm had gone off five minutes after they’d turned down the lights. Jongin had gotten spooked, then tried frantically to stop Taemin from going out there and checking it out, and has tried really hard since to pretend none of that ever happened, because in the end all Taemin had found was a cigarette butt floating in a toilet in the bathroom down the hall. Taemin lets him get away with it, but he still thinks of his wide eyes and nervous chatter every time they end up here, and tonight is no different. For a second he wants to see that Jongin again. 

Jongin is the one person in the world who’s never needed words from Taemin, but maybe he’s the person Taemin wants to talk to most right now.

“How come you don’t hate me?” Taemin says finally, and he’s surprised at how painless the words are.

“I do,” Jongin says comfortably. “But you probably hate me too, considering how messed up your life is now. Should I get out while I still can?”

They’re the same age, they’re at the same level, they want the same things, and now it looks like Taemin is going ahead first, and leaving Jongin behind. Everything is changing, and Taemin wants to change himself, and that’s probably the scariest part, because he hasn’t met the person he’ll be, doesn’t know if Jongin will still understand him.

That, and he has no time anymore, not for anyone.

“Jongin-ah,” Taemin begins, and then fights with himself in the dark. “I want to do well. I just. I really, really want to get this right.”

Jongin just says, “I know,” and then suddenly they can talk about other things, and there are so many other things Taemin wants to talk about. Jongin really hates his sister’s new boyfriend, his MP3 player broke again, and recently he’s become completely obsessed with breeding the perfect Eevee for every evolution, and if he gets a shiny one he’ll name it Taemin, ha ha. Taemin tells him about the time Kibum hyung clogged the toilet and tried to pin it on Jingi hyung, the ghost Jingi hyung saw two weeks ago, all the crazy things Jonghyun hyung does to provoke Minho hyung into opening his mouth, that Jonghyun hyung always pesters him about his homework, then practically does it for him, and then blames Taemin when his grades are still bad. He doesn’t mention that it’s been two weeks since he last saw his family, a month and a half since he last went home.

Taemin should sleep.

 

“Lee Taemin!”

Jonghyun hyung.

Taemin cracks his eyes open to check, and sure enough, he’s towering over him, arms crossed over his chest and staring down at him. His face tells Taemin that it’s bad. Very, very bad, and for the couple seconds Taemin lingers in that halfway state, that’s all he has to work with, before his brain starts working, and details start to filter in.

“You…” Jonghyun hyung’s voice is trembling, and it’s like he’s so mad he can’t find words. “Get up. I know you’re awake, if you pretend you’re asleep you don’t wanna know what I’ll do to you.”

Taemin can’t move for several excruciating seconds, but somehow Jonghyun hyung gives him long enough for his body to cooperate with his brain, and Taemin shoves upright. His jacket falls away.

“What time is it?” Taemin asks, and the instant he says it his insides have turned to lead. “Is there a schedule, did I mess up?”

 _“What time is it?”_ Jonghyun hyung parrots breathlessly, like that is so besides the point it’s not even funny. “Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve put me through tonight?” His mouth twists waiting for a reaction that doesn’t come and doesn’t come, and before Taemin can catch up he’s biting out, “No schedule, it’s six, it doesn’t matter, I had to wait and get a janitor to let me in.”

The relief hits Taemin like a knockout punch, and he can’t think with his head spinning like this. “So it’s okay.”

“No it’s not? In case you forgot, you’re fucking sixteen years old! You can’t just not come home, and stay out all night, and not fucking tell me where you are!” Jonghyun hyung shouts, eyes eating up his whole face.

Taemin doesn’t get why he’s not scared, why he seems to float as Jonghyun hyung rages at him endlessly. “I tried to call you so many fucking times, don’t tell me you don’t have your phone with you?” he demands, barely giving Taemin a second before his eyes narrow and he snarls, “If you ignored me, if you turned it off, if you let the battery die, so help me,” and then, “I had to lie to manager hyung last night to cover for you, you stupid brat,” and then finally he yanks Taemin back down to earth, “You are so lucky I didn’t call your parents, I was _this_ close.”

It gets to the point where Jongin can’t take it anymore, sits up too because it’s less awkward and less terrifying than squeezing his eyes shut and pretending he’s not there, and Jonghyun hyung rounds on him like he’s seeing him for the first time. “And you, do your parents know where you are?”

Jongin is speechless, and Jonghyun hyung’s eyes ping between the two of them furiously for one long moment, before his brain seems to combust, and his body gives out on him, and he sags down into a crouch, burying his face in hands shaking so badly Taemin can tell from where he’s sitting.

Taemin’s stomach opens up, and he doesn’t think before he crawls over to him and touches Jonghyun hyung’s shoulder, so warm and solid under his fingers. “I’m sorry, hyung,” he says, and he is, he really is, and when that doesn’t seem to fix anything and Taemin is still talking to Jonghyun hyung’s hands, “Please don’t be mad.”

That works, but probably for the wrong reasons, because now Jonghyun hyung is glaring at him, desperate and cornered. In the end he lets everything out in one long groan, “Taemin-aaaaaaaaaah,” like he’s at his wit’s end, like Taemin is being totally impossible.

“Yes, hyung?” he replies, because he doesn’t know if this is one of those times where it’s better to shut up, but somehow he can’t do it.

Jonghyun hyung’s face goes strange for a couple seconds, almost like he’s going to smile, or maybe cry, but he just scrubs a rough hand through his hair and sits down on his butt.

“What am I going to do with you? You make me so crazy…” He shoots Taemin an accusing look. “If you thought of me at all, you wouldn’t do this shit to me.”

“I won’t do it again,” Taemin offers.

“Hyung isn’t stupid, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun hyung says flatly. “Don’t say stuff you don’t mean.”

But his hands are reaching out and Taemin keeps still, lets him pull his cheeks until they’re stretched wide enough to hurt a little, then squish them in with his thumbs until the walls of his mouth close and his lips fold and pucker like a blowfish. He’s careful not to bite his tongue as he gets out, “I won’t do it next time,” and it’s only dangerous for a second or two, hands frozen in place on Taemin’s face and widening eyes, before Jonghyun hyung breaks into a helpless laugh and Taemin starts to have difficulty looking at him.

Everything slides back to normal, or what’s approaching it in this new world where Jonghyun hyung can make Taemin go hot and cold with just a word, just a look, and Taemin doesn’t know where to put his eyes when he’s around him. Taemin and Jongin go into the bathroom and wash up, and seeing himself in the mirror makes Taemin want to shower so badly, and Jongin probably feels the same, climbing back into his uniform. And maybe Jonghyun hyung is sorry, maybe he’s embarrassed—Taemin still hasn’t learned to figure out the difference with him—but in the end he feeds them both breakfast, takes them to the convenience store down the block, sits them down and buys them a small mountain of triangle kimbap.

After Taemin peels back the seaweed along with the wrapper on his first one, Jonghyun hyung tuts impatiently and takes over for him, working fast to stay ahead of him. Jongin can’t keep up with him at all, and the two of them end up waiting on Taemin in awkward silence as he eats and eats. Taemin knows he’s being a sucky friend, because Jongin doesn’t know Jonghyun hyung very well and Jonghyun hyung kind of yelled at him a while ago, but he’s suddenly so hungry he doesn’t care.

“Do you need money for the bus?” Jonghyun hyung asks Jongin when they finally step out into the growing daylight.

Jongin shakes his head, and Jonghyun hyung considers him.

“Jongin-ah, when it’s just you and Taeminnie, do you guys even talk?” When Jongin nods, Jonghyun hyung shifts his gaze to Taemin, and Taemin barely has any time before he goes on, “Does Taeminnie ever say weird stuff about me? Whatever it is, you can tell hyung, it’s okay.”

Taemin’s insides lurch, even though he has nothing to be nervous about, because he’s not lying when he counters, “Anything weird I say to your face,” but the smirk on Jonghyun hyung’s face lingers, even when Taemin pushes at his shoulders and he loses his footing.

Jonghyun hyung hangs back while Taemin says goodbye to Jongin, though, giving the two of them some time, and it’s so unlike him that it bugs. Jongin gives Taemin a smile, reaches out and ruffles his hair, and Taemin can’t focus, but he doesn’t want to say goodbye anyway, doesn’t like how this has to be a thing they do now.

“Call me, okay?” Taemin says.

“Answer your phone,” Jongin replies, and his hair feels as oily as Taemin’s probably did.

And then it’s just him and Jonghyun hyung again.

Their day starts at ten, apparently, so they head back, passing the bus stop they used to share and heading for the new one, two blocks further. It takes a half hour for the bus to come, and it’ll be another twenty to twenty-five minutes before they get off, then ten minutes to walk to their dorm from there, and by the time they get back they’ll be down to two hours or less.

Taemin spends the time talking and talking and talking and Jonghyun hyung only answers him when he feels like it, which is less and less of the time. Then the bus makes a turn, and his boneless body crushes in against Taemin’s side, head lolling onto his shoulder, mouth open and wet on Taemin’s shirt, and all of the sudden Taemin is trapped. It takes him too long to relax, too long to realize that he’s got that smile on his face again, the one he can feel in his stomach. 

Then, when Taemin thinks it’s safe, he hauls his backpack up between his legs, sets it in his lap and searches through it for the phone his parents bought him before he left home. He finally finds it buried in the bottom corner underneath his school crap. Just looking at it, he doesn’t know if it’s dead or off, would have to flip it open to see. He leaves it there.

 

A day later, four days left to go, Taemin is down to three things he’s sure of. He doesn’t know his own face right now. He’s been smiling for so long he might forget how to do it when he’s finally allowed to stop. And finally, he hates cameras.

In other words, he fails at photo shoots and it’s becoming a thing.

He’d thought that it was over for a while after he survived the ones they did for the album, but here they are again, trying to convince the people on the other side of the lens that they’re the five happiest people on earth, white set, no sleep, the whole day still ahead. Taemin doesn’t know what these pictures are for, didn’t even remember to ask manager hyung where they were going as they piled into the van in the dark this morning. It doesn’t matter to him, anyway.

They’ve already gone through so many different outfits and so many different poses, and there’s no end to any of it. Everyone else is doing fine, one thing to the next, no problem, and Taemin is falling further and further behind. He doesn’t know where to put his limbs, how to angle himself so he has the least chance of coming out weird. How to disappear. The only constant Taemin has right now is Jonghyun hyung’s voice in his right ear.

Jonghyun hyung isn’t talking to Taemin. He’s screwing around with Kibum hyung.

“Kibum-ah, you have something on your face. Here, let me,” he says, then leans around Minho hyung and flicks Kibum hyung’s forehead, there and gone in a second.

Kibum hyung just rolls his eyes. “Key, it’s Key now.”

“That’s right, sorry. Key-goon. What was it Taeminnie said earlier, ‘Key hyung-goon?’ _‘Hyung-goon?’_ ”

Jonghyun hyung bumps full-bodied into Taemin’s side, like he needs to let him know he’s making fun of him or something, and the best Taemin can do is look at him out of the corner of his eye, because he’s afraid he’ll lose the plot if he joins in.

“Jonghyun hyung-goon…Jonghyun hyung-goon, your tag is showing, hang on,” Kibum hyung riffs, and slips his hand down the back of Jonghyun hyung’s shirt instead, leaves it there until he’s one hundred percent sure it won’t get a reaction. Taemin clues in that Kibum hyung’s hand must freezing once Jonghyun hyung’s fingers dig into his shoulder, but Taemin doesn’t let it show, either.

The two of them keep at it on and off until Minho hyung squeezes in next to Taemin to get away and they start to forget about the camera for each other. And then eventually Kibum hyung tires of it on his own, just whispers something in Jonghyun hyung’s ear and rocks back on his heels and smirks when Jonghyun hyung loses control and bursts out laughing. The lights keep flashing, so it’s okay, probably. It’s probably better than them talking.

The next time they’re sent off to the little side room to change, Taemin is pretty sure Jingi hyung tries to say something.

“I get that you guys are just trying to get through this,” he begins, then seems to realize he has four pairs of eyes on him and gets stuck for one long, painful moment. “But everyone else here is, too. Like, we’re at work right now, and that’s important. I don’t know if any of you guys had a job before this, but it’s the same as being in class or something.”

Kibum hyung’s brow wrinkles. “What are you talking about?”

“Hyung, do the things you say make sense in your head?”

And maybe Jonghyun hyung is piling on, but Taemin thinks he’s really asking.

“Usually I figure things out as I’m saying them?” Jingi hyung replies after a beat, and that’s all it takes before he kind of gives up, because everyone else has already moved on.

Taemin still wants to hear him out, looking at the smile on Jingi hyung’s face, the same one he’s been wearing all morning, but he doesn’t know how to let him know, and Kibum hyung has other ideas, anyway. Says, “Taeminnie, come here,” and steps up behind him instead, tugs the hood of his sweatshirt out from where it was stuffed in Taemin’s collar. Then he pulls it over Taemin’s head, throwing his hair into his eyes and getting Jonghyun hyung to laugh and abandoning Taemin to a tsking coordi noona. Taemin is left trying to figure out what’s more impossible, how much make up it takes just to look like he’s not wearing any at all, or the part where he has to keep still and avoid eye contact while another person puts him together from the outside in.

The next time they escape into that room, it’s to wait while the staff picks them off one by one for individual shots. Jingi hyung gets it over with first and Taemin will probably end up going last, and Taemin spends the wait hoping no one else can tell how sick it’s making him. He’s safer with Jingi hyung than Jonghyun hyung, because at least he won’t try to make him talk, so when he finally returns and throws himself down on the sagging couch in the corner, Taemin sticks with him.

They just sit for a while.

“I don’t know what these people want from me,” Jingi hyung admits to him finally, still dazed.

Taemin gets that. Maybe it’s the first thing he’s understood all day.

“I never realized anyone needed so many photos for anything,” he says. “Why do they need so many photos?”

“I don’t think they need them, Taemin-ah,” Jingi hyung says, and again, that sounds right.

“Hyung,” trips off Taemin’s tongue before he knows what he’s doing, but it’s not painful, leaving it out there. Jingi hyung just blinks at him, small curved mouth, and he’s not waiting for anything, not watching Taemin, and suddenly it’s so easy to say it. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Taemin can’t piece together a narrative out of all the random things they’ve gone through in the last few days that makes sense to him, filming practice interviews and taking millions of photos and doing wardrobe tests and not spending every waking moment practicing their song. But then, he probably just doesn’t know any better, only knows his own ideas about his future, and that’s scarier than anything, that being an idol, doing music this way, isn’t at all what he thought it would be. That he never really thought. 

Taemin doesn’t know he’s panicking until Jingi hyung’s hand lands on his head, heavy and gentle and real.

“It’s okay if you don’t know,” Jingi hyung says, hand punctuating each word, so that Taemin’s scalp wiggles under his palm. “I don’t either, and I’m the one that’s actually supposed to.”

 

When they get back at ten that night, Taemin is okay again. He doesn’t understand why he let things get to him this morning, why he always lets it get to him, because when they finally got to work on their routine in the afternoon, every part came to them all so easily and naturally that everything flew right out of his head, and all he had to worry about was breathing. Now he’s sore and tired and kind of gross, but his muscles are singing and he doesn’t have to get up until seven tomorrow morning, and even then it’s just to go practice some more.

He’s also starving, which isn’t a real problem until Kibum hyung gets between him and the refrigerator.

“Do you know how late it is? You’ll bloat if you eat now, Taemin-ah.”

Taemin knows he’s right, but he wishes Kibum hyung could tell his stomach, because this is another new rule that doesn’t change anything inside Taemin, just makes his life harder. Still, he gives up, because he knows Kibum hyung will watch every bite he takes tomorrow if he doesn’t listen now. As it is, Kibum hyung promises to make him an omelet in the morning, like he does every single time he wins this standoff, and shuttles Taemin out of the kitchen.

Taemin gets over it, takes a shower in case he gets shut out of the bathroom again in the morning and crawls into bed. He lies there as his pillow grows damp from his hair and his eyelids burn red against the light and the window unit strains and sputters, and tries really, really hard not to think about all the things he would eat if he could.

And then lies there some more, for hours and hours and hours.

At some point in the night Jonghyun hyung climbs down from his bed, feet sinking into Taemin’s mattress before he hops onto the floor, ninja-like. At first Taemin assumes he had to pee or something, but he never comes back, and Taemin can’t seem to forget he’s gone. When Minho hyung’s alarm trills through the silence, and Minho hyung crawls over Jingi hyung, gets up, Taemin decides he’s done with this, too.

Jonghyun hyung is nowhere to be found.

Taemin’s insides squeeze down to nothing, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he shoves into his sneakers and follows Minho hyung out the door. Taemin hasn’t thought very far ahead, but the first thing they see is Jonghyun hyung sitting in the stairwell, dozing off against the wall, so it doesn’t matter.

Taemin kicks him in the small of his back.

Jonghyun hyung jerks awake, grabs clumsily at the banister before he loses his seat. He turns halfway, peering up at them, and Taemin struggles to get his expression under control.

“Where are you two going?” Jonghyun hyung says suspiciously, low-voiced, then decides he’s not going to have this conversation staring up at them from a few steps below, and climbs up onto the landing with them.

Taemin doesn’t think he’s in a position to ask them anything. “What are you doing out here?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t sleep. It’s too hot in there,” Jonghyun hyung tells him like it’s nothing, not weird at all.

He scratches at his hair absently, ratty shirt riding up to reveal a strip of skin above his waistband. Taemin cuts his eyes away and that works, the tingling in his ears doesn’t spread, but in that time Jonghyun hyung sharpens again.

“Are you going for a run or something? You too, Taeminnie?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t sleep,” Taemin says, handing his words back to him without really meaning to.

“Then…come take a bath with me.”

Taemin is so surprised he forgets himself, looks up and sees the expectant look Jonghyun hyung is giving him, tilted chin and mouth crooking at the corners.

“Right now?” he asks, uncertain. It’s still only five in the morning. They have two hours…

“Sure, we have time right now,” Jonghyun hyung replies, like he’s read Taemin’s mind. “The bathhouse will be empty this time of day, too.”

Taemin remembers Minho hyung when he brushes past him like a ghost, nodding at Jonghyun hyung and starting down the stairs. He only gets a couple steps before Jonghyun hyung calls after him, too loud. 

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

Minho hyung startles, huge-eyed and hesitant as he looks up at them.

“Come with us, Minho-yah,” Jonghyun hyung says, testing out the words like he’s trying to convince himself, but apparently that’s all it takes to get him rolling. “If you run today you’ll have a heatstroke, it’s no good. I heard it’s supposed to get up to eighty-five.”

“The sun isn’t even up, hyung,” Minho hyung protests, and Taemin thinks that might be the first time he’s heard his voice in a day.

“How come when you open your mouth it’s just to talk back?” Jonghyun hyung huffs, hands on his hips now. He’s already run out of argument, though, so all he has is, “You exercise every day, come on.”

Minho hyung sees them every day, too, and his runs are probably the only time he has that’s one hundred percent his. He still climbs back up the stairs, waits while Jonghyun hyung hunches over to punch in the passcode, nose two inches away from the buttons, crowds into the bathroom with them to collect their shower caddies, holds the door until it’s an inch away from shutting and then lets Jonghyun hyung usher him down the stairs and into the blue pre-dawn street.

Taemin understands. He’s doing all the same things.

 

Taemin gets as clean as he’s been in a month, and then he ends up scrubbing Jonghyun hyung’s back while he does Minho hyung’s, not sure how much he should be noticing, the shift of shoulder blades under Jonghyun hyung’s skin, the curve of his spine, the long hair clinging to the nape of his neck.

He thinks he’s doing a good job until Jonghyun hyung twists around to give him a look, demands, “Do you have something against me, Taeminnie?” and turns back mostly straight-faced, shoulders trembling with the laughter he’s trying to hide. Taemin continues before he’s ready, as gently as he can now. He didn’t know, Taemin has only done this with his brother before and he’s never said anything. When Jonghyun hyung goes to return the favor later, holding him by the shoulders and trying to turn him around in the water, Taemin has to get out. He doesn’t know Minho hyung well enough to ask him instead, anyway.

Afterwards, they change into the blue cotton pajamas the ahjumma at the entrance gave them, buy some juice and hard-boiled eggs and then hang around in the common area and not-watch the news. Jonghyun hyung lets Taemin smash his against his forehead, then peels them for him. It’s as quiet as Jonghyun hyung promised, mostly old couples, harassed-looking ahjummas winding down from working all night, young people with nowhere else to go, all wearing the same uniform as them.

“The weather says seventy-five as a high,” Minho hyung observes at length, keeping his eyes on the TV.

“That’s nice,” Jonghyun hyung says blandly, and Taemin thinks he’s missed the stink eye Minho hyung gives him, but then he goes on, “and your memory is way too long, by the way, it’s just going to cause problems for you.”

“I was just saying,” is all Minho hyung says. And then, “I’m not the only one.”

Jonghyun hyung nods slowly, studying the length of his bare legs stretched out in front of him. “I was just saying, too. And I would say the same to him.”

Taemin isn’t a part of this conversation, that’s about all he understands. It seems like Jonghyun hyung talks to everyone but him.

But it’s over already, anyway. The mulish set to Minho hyung’s jaw softens by degrees, and his voice is normal this time when he says, “At least there’s only five of us. I heard Super Junior had to share one bathroom at the beginning, too.”

Jonghyun hyung grins up at him. “Better hope we make it big too, so we can upgrade soon.”

Taemin has never thought of it on those terms before. He’s fine with things the way they are, as long as they can make something out of it. He’s fine sitting around in clean borrowed clothes, not doing anything or saying anything, and he’ll be fine getting up and heading back before he wants to, fine taking Kibum hyung’s scolding alone when they get there, fine sitting in morning traffic and working straight through to tomorrow morning and getting up just to do it all over again, as long as he gets somewhere.

They don’t have long now, so Taemin takes long pulls of his juice until the carton crumples, then folds all their eggshells into a napkin, and walks them over to the garbage can. He takes the long way back, and by the time he gets there, it’s time to go, and he doesn’t have to get up, because he already did.

And then it hits him. “Hey, doesn’t our CD come out today? And our MV, too.”

Jonghyun hyung just stares at him. Stares some more.

“Taemin-ah…how could you forget that!?”

 

They have to wait until that night to see physical proof that their album really happened. Jonghyun hyung was desperate to go out and buy it in person, see it in a real store, next to all the albums he’s browsed through and saved up for over the years, but manager hyung went while they were at practice instead, and now here they are, five copies laid out on the kitchen table.

Jonghyun hyung’s hands are shaking so much that Taemin puts his own down and takes his from him, rips open the clingy plastic packaging a second time, just as easy as the first. More proof that this is real. He’s not sure what he’s feeling, if he feels enough, or anything at all even, spinning the CD in place and leafing through the photobook. He doesn’t remember any of the moments he sees staring back at him, but he didn’t really expect to, either. Then he hits the photocard, wedged in like a bookmark.

“Who did you get? Did you get Jonghyun?” Jonghyun hyung leans into his side and cranes his neck to look over Taemin’s shoulder before Taemin can even move. “All five of us, huh. I don’t know if that’s the best or worst one.”

“I got Jonghyun,” Jingi hyung announces, picking his up from the floor where it had shaken loose, and when Jonghyun hyung makes a grab for it, he steps back, holding it protectively to his chest. “You can’t have him, he’s mine~”

Jonghyun hyung gives him that look that he gives Taemin sometimes, the one that says he’s being a total weirdo, but maybe Jingi hyung doesn’t know how to read it, because he just laughs and wanders away. Jonghyun hyung moves on in half a second anyway.

“Hey, did anyone get Taeminnie? Who got Taemin?”

Minho hyung brandishes his, “I did,” and before Taemin can even get a look himself, Jonghyun hyung snatches it away jealously, turning in his seat and studying it closely, face hidden.

Minho hyung starts to protest, so Jonghyun hyung gives him his own, sliding it across the table like an afterthought, “Let’s trade, here,” and then he says to Taemin as casually as he can, “Wow, Taeminnie, what is this supposed to be? Were you mad or something when they took this?”

Then laughs his ass off as Taemin gets up on his knees in his chair and tries to wrestle it away from him and almost knocks him out of his seat. His head digs into Taemin’s side weirdly and his shoulders cut Taemin off at the ribs. Taemin just wants to see, he hasn’t even seen it yet.

Taemin only wins when Jonghyun hyung lets him, holds it up for his judgment, and it’s just another picture, just another Taemin he doesn’t quite recognize. Maybe they told him not to smile for this one, who knows, they told him all kinds of things.

Jonghyun hyung takes it away and folds it into his palm, eyeing Taemin like he’s still kind of waiting for a reaction.

“Who did you get, hyung?” Taemin asks Kibum hyung, just to say something.

Kibum hyung shows him. “Minho.”

“Oh! Minho hyung has you now, too,” Taemin says, seizing on the realization. “You got each other.”

Jonghyun hyung can’t shut up. “Looks like we have a couple~”

“It totally doesn’t count,” Kibum hyung retorts before Jonghyun hyung even finishes. “He had Taeminnie before, and you had me.”

There’s a short electric silence, one of those moments where the air changes and everyone in the room can feel it, and all of the sudden Taemin doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know why Kibum hyung’s lips bite down to nothing in the next few seconds, why Minho hyung’s face falls open and his eyes go wide.

Then Minho hyung bursts out, “What he said! Give Taeminnie back to me.”

“No way, trade with each other and get yourselves if you’re going to be like this,” Jonghyun hyung says, almost too fast, and his words don’t even land on the other side of the table before Minho hyung lunges for him, and Jonghyun hyung scrambles up onto his chair and then the table, crazy laughter raining down on Taemin in tatters.

Kibum hyung gets sick of it before it’s really begun, slaps his photocard down on the table and takes his album and leaves the room, muttering, “Fucking psychos,” as he slips past Taemin.

And then “Replay” booms out of the old PC in the next room and Jingi hyung returns, hovering uncertainly at Taemin’s elbow.

“No one got me?” he says.

It takes Taemin way too long to answer, stuck on Jonghyun hyung wheezing through negotiations with Minho hyung all the way across the room, clinging to the cabinets and standing with one foot in the sink now.

But then he says, “I did, kind of,” and shows Jingi hyung the five of them, crowded in close and smiling, arms around each other.

 

Taemin’s night is only half over somehow. Jonghyun hyung is exhausted from keeping Minho hyung at bay but still too keyed up to go to bed, never mind sleep, and Taemin is the same by default, just trying to catch up before Jonghyun hyung moves onto the next thing, then the next, and then the next. No one else even bothers, and Taemin is just hanging on until they go to bed, because Jonghyun hyung goes quiet when it’s just the two of them. Maybe tonight is different, maybe not. 

No one else wants to sleep, either, though, for the longest time. Finally Kibum hyung is lured out of their room to yell at Jingi hyung when the album cycles back around and “Replay” comes on for the fourth or fifth time, and in the meantime Minho hyung goes to bed. Kibum hyung hangs around for a while, sighing at Jonghyun hyung’s jokes and hinting that Taemin should be in bed, and when that doesn’t work, he goes to shower and follows Minho hyung.

And then.

“You’re telling me this isn’t your fault?”

Minho hyung.

Jonghyun hyung’s hand shoots out to grab Taemin before he knows what’s going on, but Taemin’s instincts get to him quicker, and the next thing he knows, he’s standing in the bedroom doorway, Jingi hyung pressing him forward, Jonghyun hyung bringing up the rear. Minho hyung and Kibum hyung are standing in one corner, sharp-elbowed and red-faced in the shadow of the bunk bed they share.

Minho hyung either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that they have an audience.

“I mean, let’s be honest. This kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if you didn’t go around trying to pick up after people before they’re even done with something.”

“If you picked up your shit I wouldn’t have to. Aigoo, all this over dirty fucking clothes on the fucking floor,” Kibum hyung says loudly, eyes shifting towards the three of them before they snap back to Minho hyung, go hard. “Once you figure out that you’re not living at home anymore, then you can talk.”

For a minute Minho hyung can’t speak, and Taemin is worried he’s going to blow up, but then his rage slips sideways instead, “One, you can wear jeans a second day, so not dirty!” He takes several deep breaths, then forgets all that, thrusts something in Kibum hyung’s face. “And two, I’ve been looking for this all fucking week, you could have said something instead of just—”

“How am I supposed to know if you don’t fucking tell me?” Kibum hyung cuts across him, then appeals to the rest of them openly, and everything inside Taemin comes to a stop so suddenly, insides splattering against his ribs, because. 

Kibum hyung says, “Did he tell any of you he was looking for it?” and Minho hyung flaps the thing in his hand, until its contents slip out and flutter to the floor, crumpled and blotchy and useless, says, “You should have told me instead of just leaving it here for me to find, and now look at it. Shit,” and it’s his wallet.

Taemin did the laundry this week, Tuesday morning after he spent the night out and Jonghyun hyung came and got him and brought him back. Jonghyun hyung helped him start the dryers before they had to go and their clothes sat in there for two days until Kibum hyung remembered they existed today, folded them and hauled them all up here, but Taemin did the laundry.

He doesn’t realize he’s said any of this out loud until Jonghyun hyung is there again. “Taeminnie, come here, come on. Let’s get out of here, hyung will buy you a snack.”

Taemin isn’t going anywhere.

“I did it, it was my week for laundry, I forgot to check all the pockets,” he says, maybe repeating himself but he has to get it out, he has to, and then suddenly Jonghyun hyung has him halfway turned around, twisting his legs up, and he’s looking at Jonghyun hyung, and it’s easier to say it to him, “You helped me, you know I did it, so why are you—”

Jonghyun hyung is shaking his head, “Taeminnie, it’s not about that, this has nothing to do with you, come on—”

Taemin wriggles free, gets his legs under him again and gets as far as he can into the room. 

“I’m sorry,” he says to Minho hyung, finally, finally, and after that his body starts to make sense to him again. His hands have gone cold and numb, balled into fists, and his heart is still racing, beating out his chest, but he did it, he should be okay now.

And then Taemin gets his first good look at Kibum hyung and Minho hyung since he started, and they look exactly the same as they did somehow, livid and glaring, not enough oxygen in the room, except they can’t scream at each other anymore.

So he didn’t do anything.

Jingi hyung is the first one to speak. “Out. Living room.”

Taemin doesn’t feel like he can move right now, but everyone else goes, so he has to. Again, Jonghyun hyung goes to him, pushing him forward by the shoulders and then down onto the couch. Jonghyun hyung perches on the armrest next to him with his leg up, so that his bare foot burrows into the soft underside of Taemin’s knee, bony and insistent.

Jingi hyung doesn’t sit at all, just paces in front of them all, back and forth and back and forth.

“I’ve been doing some thinking since we all moved in here, about what would be best, and. Ummmm.” Jingi hyung’s voice stops the moment his movements do, and he stands there, hands poised, considers them like somehow they’ve got answers for him. Nothing comes to him, so he barrels ahead, comes right out with it, “How about we clear the air? Just sit here, and listen to what everybody has to say before things actually get bad. So if anyone has anything to say, they can say it, and nobody will get mad. Like immunity or something?” 

Taemin has had enough time. He can think again, now that it won’t do him any good.

“What, we just come out with all kinds of shit and no one reacts?” Jonghyun hyung laughs sharply, casting his eyes down the couch. “I don’t think it works like that, hyung. I don’t think you’re helping.”

Silence follows him, angry as a bee sting.

This is the day their album came out, and that should be the important thing, the one thing he’ll remember about today. It shouldn’t matter so much to Taemin right now that he’s tired of feeling stupid and left out and being everyone else’s problem all the time, or that he hates Kibum hyung and Minho hyung right now for putting him through all this for nothing, and hates Jingi hyung a little for trying to make everyone deal with it so he doesn’t have to do it alone. That he hates Jonghyun hyung most of all for pushing him around, maybe just hates how much he likes it.

Or that he wants to get out of here.

Or that he wants to go home, hates that he can’t, and hates himself because he wants to.

Silence.

“I already say whatever I think, so I don’t need to be here for this,” Kibum hyung says finally, making as if to stand.

Minho hyung snorts loudly next to Taemin. “That’s true.”

Kibum hyung can’t get up and roll his eyes at the same time, so he flops back down.

“Fine then,” shoots out of him. “If anyone has anything to say to me, go right ahead. _Anyone._ ”

Jingi hyung chews his lip, not sure which one to look at. “Guys…”

And before either of them can open their mouth again, Jonghyun hyung is done. He springs up like he was just waiting for half a chance, reaching down and catching Taemin’s wrist between his fingers, saying, “Let’s go, Taeminnie, suddenly hyung really, really wants to eat tteokbokki,” and that is it. Taemin has had enough of him.

“I have something to say to Jonghyun hyung,” he says, yanking away for the last time and breathing fast, barely aware he’s stood up, painfully, awfully aware of Jonghyun hyung at his shoulder even though he won’t look, he’s not looking. _“Fuck off._ ”

And then he’s out that door before any of them can stop him.

 

Taemin’s anger doesn’t carry him further than the park across the street, and it’s a sweet summer night, warm and still and moonlit, but it’s only the shame that keeps him out there. Walking isn’t doing him any good, and practicing his solo just makes him think of the others, so he plops himself down on a swing, cool chains biting into his palms, and the mulch is so soft and stubborn that he has to work for a long while to leave a footprint.

Taemin wants to apologize so badly, but he doesn’t want to see Jonghyun hyung look at him right now, doesn’t want to know what kind of face Taemin showed him in there. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten mad at Jonghyun hyung, not by a long shot, but it is the first time he couldn’t keep it in, and that’s scary all on its own. It makes sense that living with him is changing things, but Taemin doesn’t like tripping over all the little ways it makes either of them different from before. It just makes him feel even dumber.

“You didn’t go very far. Guess you weren’t as mad as you looked.”

“Hyung,” Taemin says automatically, and the only thing that surprises him is that it’s Minho hyung.

Minho hyung sits down on the swing next to him. He doesn’t say anything for a while, just twists himself up tighter and tighter and tighter, and then pulls his legs up and lets go, spinning out and careening into Taemin, warm and big and sudden, and all of the sudden Taemin is laughing.

As soon as he realizes what he’s doing he kind of stops, and they sit for a while longer, and then Minho hyung says to him, “I’m not mad about my wallet, Taemin-ah. It’s not your fault anyway, it’s mine.”

Taemin scuffs his foot on the ground. He’d forgotten about that somehow, but now he feels guilty all over again.

“You know how it is, sometimes you just get angry and you need an excuse,” Minho hyung continues.

“Does that make any sense?” Taemin says, suddenly so impatient with him it makes him a little sick. “I ruined all your stuff, your pictures and probably your cards…you can be mad at me, I can take that much.”

“So I’ve got your okay?” Minho hyung nudges him, tries to catch his eye, probably to offset the fact that he is so obviously this close to laughing at Taemin. “I’m still not mad, though~”

Taemin has nothing to say to that.

“You know, up till now, wherever I’ve gone, I’ve always been the maknae,” Minho hyung says this time, careful to talk to his knees.

“I guess we didn’t see each other much before,” Taemin allows, and he doesn’t know what’s stranger, how little he does know of Minho hyung from before, now that they’re debuting together, or that he’s already looking at the last three years of his life like it’s his past.

Anyway, that’s not important right now. Maybe nothing is.

“Sometimes it’s nice that I don’t have to decide anything, but then sometimes I hate it. I don’t know, I just really, really hate it,” Taemin finds himself saying.

“It was the same for me. People never asked me anything, they just assumed all kinds of stuff,” Minho hyung assures him, waiting Taemin out, waiting for him to look him in the face, and Taemin can do it. Then he goes on, “But they helped me a lot, too. And they tried really hard to make things easier on me than they were on them.” He tips Taemin a smile, not the megawatt grin he turns on for the cameras, a small puckish one that doesn’t sit so easily in his perfect face. “I wasn’t as cute as you, either, you could probably get away with a lot more.”

Taemin knows he’s lost. Still, he wants to be unreasonable. “I don’t care, I wanna be the hyung for once.”

Minho hyung just laughs at him.

“This is my first time, Taeminnie,” he says, twisting his swing around to face him and setting his features into something approaching stern. “If you’re good to me, I’ll let you know how it is later.”

“Okay,” Taemin agrees, because that’s just the way it’s going to be whatever he says, but Minho hyung reaches out and ruffles his hair, beaming.

“Taemin-ah,” he says, then hesitates, like he hasn’t thought of something to say. “I don’t. Hyung doesn’t want to go back inside yet.”

Taemin doesn’t either. “Should we take a walk?”

They set off into the darkness, and don’t come across anything beyond the sound of leaves and sidewalk gilt in amber. Taemin doesn’t really mind that Minho hyung keeps testing things, pushing his luck, “Just around the block, Taemin-ah, it’s pretty late,” and, “You can hang onto hyung if it’s too dark,” and, “Do you want to ride on hyung’s back for a while?” And somehow every step further away is just one step closer to the moment where Taemin has to go back. 

When they finally do trudge up the stairs and unlock the door, though, the dorm is dark, and everyone else is already in bed. Taemin settles down next to Jingi hyung and stares up at the mattress above for a really long time, feels all its creaks and sighs in his chest.

 

The next day Jonghyun hyung just acts like nothing happened, so Taemin stops feeling sorry.

In the morning he shoves Taemin out of the way, darts into the bathroom ahead of him and shuts the door in his face, runs the shower for ten minutes while Taemin’s bladder slowly explodes. Talks to Kibum hyung and picks rice off Taemin’s face at breakfast. Hurries him into the back of the van and crowds into Taemin’s space, scooting into the seat next to him instead of taking the other window, and then ignores him for the entire drive over to SM.

Taemin concentrates on other things because today is Friday. Two days left.

 

He doesn’t want to stop dancing, but he doesn’t stay late after practice because Jonghyun hyung usually won’t leave until he does, anyway. If he can’t be alone, maybe more people would be better.

He rethinks that when they get home. They go so quickly from the arctic air conditioning in the van to the drowsy, lingering dusk to the sickly, sticky heat of their dorm that Taemin feels dizzy, and when he ends up on his own anyway, vegging out on the couch with nothing to do, he doesn’t like it.

Jonghyun hyung drags Jingi hyung into their room to check and see if the window unit has crapped out again because manager hyung is never around when he doesn’t have to be, and Minho hyung is back out the door within five minutes, phone to his ear and soccer ball under his arm. When Kibum hyung comes out of the shower, he chops up a cucumber and spreads himself out on the floor, gets Taemin to layer his face with slices until he’s masked in watery green. Taemin passes when Kibum hyung offers to do him, too, eats what’s leftover instead. That just makes his stomach feel empty, so he goes into the bedroom and crawls under his bed to fetch the bag of junk food he stashed there two weeks ago, and doesn’t react when Jonghyun hyung steps on his butt—he knows it’s him because it always is—just escapes before Jonghyun hyung decides to put his weight down.

Jonghyun hyung follows him out, anyway, abandoning Jingi hyung and the air conditioner and throwing himself on the mercy of the television instead. Jingi hyung pretends to care about it for a while longer before he shuffles out and slumps down in front of the computer. 

Taemin doesn’t let Jonghyun hyung have any of his chips, even though he keeps poking him in the side and watches him more than the screen. It just makes him eat faster and faster, more and more. This goes on for a while until Kibum hyung flings his arm out and slaps Taemin’s knee.

“Hey, don’t eat too much of that crap. I’ll cook something for you.” He turns toward him as much as he dares, one cucumber slice slipping into the shell of his ear. “What does Taeminnie want to eat~?”

“I’m eating this,” Taemin says, and shovels another handful into his mouth. He’s deep enough into the bag now that the chips are shattered, sharp and salty, and the roof of his mouth is beginning to feel raw.

Jonghyun hyung snorts in Taemin’s ear, then turns on Kibum hyung instead, stretching as far as he can to dig his toes into Kibum hyung’s ribs. “What are you going to make him, anyway? Eggs?”

“Look who’s talking, you had to ask me how to use the rice cooker,” Kibum hyung retorts, then thinks it over, and Taemin should probably tell him not to bother, but for some reason he doesn’t have words right now. “There’s a lot of stuff left in the fridge. Should I warm up some stew?”

“Taemin-ah, do you want hyung to do it? You don’t need Kibummie for that~”

“Then…” Kibum hyung’s dark eyes travel from Jonghyun hyung to Taemin, and he gives him a sideways smile. “Does Taeminnie want kimchi fried rice~?”

Taemin has to give him an answer. “I said I don’t want anything.”

Kibum hyung huffs. “Fine then, don’t blame me when you look fat on TV on Sunday~”

“I don’t get fat,” Taemin snaps, then freezes. And then he bites his tongue hard enough to bleed.

For several long moments he doesn’t think at all, and when he does, all that comes to him is that time last month when Jingi hyung bought them chicken and Kibum hyung made him ask for extra radishes so he’d have something to fill up on, the daily appointments Kibum hyung has with the scale in the bathroom, how in three years Kibum hyung never asked for anything when Jonghyun hyung would go on snack runs during late nights at practice, how for Kibum hyung, tonkatsu and ramyun can destroy three weeks of work in a couple bites.

“Hyung—“

Kibum hyung hasn’t moved, hasn’t reacted, and maybe Taemin is just being stupid, but Kibum hyung’s voice sounds funny when he says, “Too late. Go ahead and stuff your face.”

Taemin keeps doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing. First Jonghyun hyung and now Kibum hyung. He keeps eating just to do something, and it tastes like nothing. The world is squeezing in on him weirdly, as tight as his chest.

He can’t do anything when the bag is taken out of his hands, and then suddenly Jonghyun hyung is there, hands holding his face, and Taemin can’t look at him, either, can’t avoid it when Jonghyun hyung thumbs his chin up. His face looks so normal it seems crazy.

“You’re tired,” Jonghyun hyung says. “I’m telling you you’re tired.”

He takes Taemin by the shoulders and propels him into the bedroom. The door clicks closed behind him, and then Taemin is alone. It’s so easy to crawl onto his bed, so easy to curl up and close his eyes, even though nothing goes away.

Eventually the murmur of voices outside fades, and then the door opens again, and then the mattress dips and Taemin already knows if he opens his eyes he’ll see Jonghyun hyung again. He does it anyway, and he isn’t prepared for the way, looking at him, his heart stammers and his ears start to go hot.

Jonghyun hyung curves one hand awkwardly around Taemin’s skull, threads his arm underneath and then lets him go, lets his head thump back down. Taemin can only hear out of one ear now, and his own hair tickles his face, and Jonghyun hyung is so warm and it’s probably too hot to be so close, and he doesn’t know what to do with his body, where to put anything, and in some quiet, secret place deep inside him, he never wants to move again.

And then it comes to him, staring into Jonghyun hyung’s face, what he would do if he could do anything he wanted. 

It doesn’t go away when he squeezes his eyes shut, lingers until he gets used to it, and then takes another look. He wants to know how his hand would fit on the plane of Jonghyun hyung’s cheek, how Jonghyun hyung’s hair would feel through his fingers, how his lips would feel pressed against Taemin’s.

Jonghyun hyung hasn’t noticed anything. His eyes have been shut the whole time.

They open.

“Go to sleep, already,” Jonghyun hyung says.

 

The first time Taemin met Jingi hyung he was singing on the roof. Today he’s just sitting up there with the noon sun beating down on him, hair plastered to his forehead and a can of pop perspiring in his hand.

Taemin doesn’t think he’s noticed him, but when his shadow falls over Jingi hyung, he doesn’t start, just pulls his earbuds out and pats the spot next to him.

Taemin hunkers down. His own sweat is starting to dry, prickly second skin, and the concrete is so warm it feels like it’s alive.

“Hyung, this should be easy, right?” Taemin says.

Jingi hyung smiles lazily at him. “It should be.”

“I think we’ve gone through it fifty times today at least, it shouldn’t be hard to do it once tomorrow. Right?”

“It shouldn’t be,” Jingi hyung says, slurping his drink.

Sometimes Taemin wonders if talking to Jingi hyung should frustrate him more, if talking to him is a little too much like talking to himself. But then, it never feels like Jingi hyung says things just to say something, even when Taemin doesn’t get where he’s coming from at all. And he listens to everything.

Taemin never has to worry about how his own words will change when they reach Jingi hyung.

“Hyung,” Taemin says, surprising himself.

“What is it?”

“What if you know something is impossible, but you want it anyway? What do you do?”

Taemin isn’t thinking of anything. He’s not thinking of Jonghyun hyung, not thinking of yesterday.

“I don’t know,” Jingi hyung says slowly, and for one painful minute Taemin thinks that’s all the answer he has for him, and wants to take back everything he just thought about how easy it is to talk to him, how nice it is to be able to just say things. But Jingi hyung thinks about it some more, turning it over in his head. “Is it something you can’t help wanting, or is it something you want to want?”

That hits Taemin sidelong. He doesn’t think some more, about Jonghyun hyung’s smile and his voice when he’s angry and the way his face changes with every tiny thing, and then about Jonghyun hyung today, trying so hard to act cool, like he’s not nervous, like he’s not thinking about tomorrow at all. How Jonghyun hyung doesn’t even know Taemin can see right through him, that Taemin knows his feelings.

“Both.”

“Then…I think that’s something you have to think about for yourself, and decide for yourself. But, Taemin-ah.”

Another answer that gets Taemin exactly nowhere. Another right answer. 

“What?”

Jingi hyung squints over at him. “How do you know that it’s impossible?”

And just like that, Taemin is totally stuck.

“I guess I don’t,” he says finally.

Maybe it’s just easier to think of it that way. If it’s impossible, it’s safe, it’s over. If it’s impossible he doesn’t have to do anything. He can just be this way forever.

 

None of them can sleep. None of them are pretending they can.

Taemin doesn’t know if he’s nervous anymore, or if it’s just that he’s never been this nervous in his whole life, no frame of reference to name this non-feeling.

There are two voicemails from Jongin on Taemin’s phone.

The first one is cut off, just a two second accident, like Jongin doesn’t know how to use his phone or something. The second is longer, but it doesn’t mean anything, either. He has Jongin’s voice telling him, “I said answer your phone,” and that’s it.

The thing is, Taemin thinks maybe he needs to talk. Everybody else here is in the same place as him, and anyway he doesn’t want them to know that it’s the morning of their debut and he thinks he might be going crazy. He can’t go anywhere, either, manager hyung has said if any of them do, he will completely end them.

It’s four in the morning, and Taemin knows this isn’t cool, but he still muscles Jingi hyung out of the way, goes into the bathroom, shuts the door, sits on the toilet and dials the number.

It takes three tries before Jongin picks up, and when he does Taemin has nothing to say.

“Hey, aren’t you going to say anything?” he blusters.

Jongin sighs down the phone, abrupt and staticky. “What?”

“You called me twice already since last time.” Maybe that’s weak, but Taemin doesn’t really care. “Whatever, just say something.”

Jongin does. It takes him a while, but he does, and they run through ten topics in as many minutes, single sentence back-and-forths. When they’re face-to-face, they can have whole conversations without talking, but on the phone things come out a little differently. They have to use words for everything, and Taemin isn’t even good at that normally, neither of them is.

Eventually light starts to creep in through the blinds, soft bars of light drifting across the tile, and Taemin has to go. He probably should go. He shouldn’t have done this in the bathroom, either, because pretty soon he hears the others moving around, and then Minho hyung comes in, gently maneuvering Taemin off the toilet, “I can’t hold it anymore, hyung is sorry,” and kicks the seat up before Taemin is even out the door.

Jongin sniggers in his ear. “Were you in the bathroom this whole time?”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Taemin says defensively, and Jongin laughs some more, muffled like he’s holding his hand over his mouth or something, and he probably is. When he calms down, Taemin finds himself asking the obvious, “Jonginnie, were you sleeping?”

“Yeah,” Jongin says blankly. Then a few seconds later, “You can call me whenever. You can keep calling until I answer, too, I don’t mind. Just don’t get mad if I swear at you next time.”

Taemin doesn’t realize how hard he’s smiling until he tries to shape the words, “You’re going to watch tonight, right?”

“Of course, Taemin sunbaenim~”

“Jongin-ah,” he says suddenly. He can’t figure out if he’s trying to find a way to say goodbye or if he’s trying to find another way to avoid it, another trap door conversation that gets him through another minute, two minutes, three minutes, whatever. Jongin waits for him.

And then Jonghyun hyung shoulders past Taemin, eyes half-closed, and faceplants onto the couch, and Taemin’s chest closes and he knows if he tries to get more time out of Jongin he won’t be able to do it.

“Shut up and go to sleep,” he barks, then hangs up before Jongin can even react, laughter fluttering around in his stomach like it’s trapped. Jonghyun hyung snorts into the cushions, loud enough that Taemin knows he’s supposed to hear, supposed to go over there and sit down on top of him and knock Jonghyun hyung’s voice right out of him. He’s probably not supposed to enjoy it so much, but that’s okay, too.

From the outside, the morning looks normal after that. Kibum hyung spends ten years in the shower, and then microwaves rice and crowds tupperware onto the table, and they all eat what they can between turns, too little or too much. When Taemin finally gets back in there, the hot water runs out, and he almost jumps out of his skin, then wonders what it will take before he can wake himself up.

This isn’t the kind of thing where he can’t decide if he’s dreaming. He’s not dreaming, and that’s probably the one thing he knows for sure. If he were, he’d be able to do everything on his own. His face wouldn’t look so plain in the mirror, he wouldn’t start sweating as soon as he puts on clean clothes, he wouldn’t lose his phone on purpose so that he won’t have the option to call his parents later if things start to get bad, and he wouldn’t feel like manager hyung is forcing him into something when he leads them out. He wouldn’t need to look at the others, do whatever they do, act however they act, just so he doesn’t feel like he’s making a mistake. Maybe he wouldn’t even be Taemin, who knows. 

 

“I forget, is this how it goes, Taemin-ah? Is hyung getting it right~?”

Jonghyun hyung does everything he can think of, throws his arms back like he’s swimming, bounces around, trips over himself, makes his own sound effects. He even tries really hard not to laugh when he sees Taemin’s staring face.

The thing is, Taemin isn’t sure he’s going to be able to do his solo any better than Jonghyun hyung is at the moment, when the time comes. When the time comes, he’s not sure he’s going to be able to open his mouth without his heart or maybe his stomach falling out.

Taemin can’t keep up with Jonghyun hyung right now. He can’t move and Jonghyun hyung can’t sit still. He can’t speak and Jonghyun hyung can’t shut up. And yet, somehow, Taemin is sure they’re exactly the same on the inside. The further apart they get, the closer to him Taemin feels, until it becomes the only thing Taemin can hang onto.

The groups before them come and go like clockwork, blaring music in between the bursts of activity, and Taemin can’t recognize the voices coming off as the voices that were just going on, even though it’s only a couple minutes of someone else’s life that’s separating them. And Taemin has even seen all these people, because the five of them made the rounds and bowed so much Taemin got dizzy, and he’s watched Inkigayo a million times, and he’s known the choreo for every single song he’s heard today….

But he can’t see them in his head at all. He has twenty minutes left, and then his life goes white. Three years for three minutes. No, fifteen years for three minutes.

“Do I look cool?” Jonghyun hyung asks him.

He looks like Jonghyun hyung. Taemin nods.

Fifteen minutes.

“Try saying ‘Jonghyun hyung, fighting!’” Jonghyun hyung says to him, dropping onto the couch right next to him. “Just once, come on.”

Taemin can’t.

Ten minutes.

Taemin can’t sit anymore, he thinks he’s going to be sick, he has to get out of this room even if it means going out there.

He can’t go out there.

“You’re fine, Taeminnie,” Jonghyun hyung tells him. “You can do it.”

Five minutes.

He gets out. Backstage. Jingi hyung’s hand is on his back, his voice is in his ear, but Taemin doesn’t know what he’s saying. And then the others are there, tight little circle of arms closing off the rest of the world, and for that minute, Taemin floats. He’s okay.

“We can do this,” Jingi hyung says, and he’s just using the voice he uses for everything, the voice he uses to test stupid puns on the rest of them, the voice he uses to ask for a break in the middle of practice and push for all the little things they all want to pretend they don’t care about, the voice he uses to call their names. “We’re Shinee, we can do this.”

He puts his hand into the center, fingers tense and strong, and for a second, he’s the only one. And then Minho hyung puts his hand in, and then Kibum hyung, and then Jonghyun hyung. Taemin barely knows what he’s doing, but everything inside him is telling him this is important, this will help. He puts his hand on top. 

They all know what they’re going to say. It’s so cheesy they’ve all sworn they would never ever say it. It’s so cheesy they all refused to talk to Jingi hyung ever again when he came up with it out of the blue in the middle of rush hour traffic one morning.

“One, two, one, two, three, four—”

“Ultra Shinee transformation!!!”

And then.

One minute left.

Jonghyun hyung is lined up in front of him. Still, he turns back to look at Taemin. Narrows his eyes and reaches up to touch his face, flakes sleep out of Taemin’s right eye and brushes at the corner of his lips. Taemin gets an eyelash for him, can’t find anything else, but he keeps looking.

Time.

 

Jonghyun hyung sings the first line and Taemin’s body moves on its own.

He gets through it. No thoughts. Then he’s alone again with Jonghyun hyung’s voice. It’s his turn.

Hands the mic off. Bends his arms in towards his body, then forward, then pushes back. Extends his leg. Points. Brings his knee up. Steps forward. Stretches into a straight line from fingertip to fingertip, then folds it into his chest. Turns. Sweeps his foot back. Points. Reaches behind—

Taemin fucks up. Kibum hyung isn’t exactly where he thought he would be. Taemin isn’t exactly where he should be.

He has no mic.

He fucked up he fucked up he fucked up.

He keeps singing over the AR. He gets through it. No thoughts.

And then it’s over. The song ends. The song was always going to end.

The song of Taemin’s life, the most important moment of Taemin’s life. It all just kind of happened, the way everything does. No one ever told him this is how it would be.

 

It’s a little crazy afterwards.

The first thing Taemin thinks is that he doesn’t want Kibum hyung to hate him, but that’s stupid, he’s so stupid right now, and Kibum hyung wants him to know that.

“I messed up, I’m sorry I messed up,” Taemin might be saying to him, “because of me, you had to…”

But then Kibum hyung pulls Taemin in, hugs him so tight that Taemin can’t tell their heartbeats apart anymore, cuts in sharply, “Taemin-ah, if you get mad at yourself right now I will kill you. Got it?”

Taemin thinks he’s happy.

Minho hyung doesn’t think he’s happy enough, picks him up by the armpits and spins him around and shouts things that aren't even words and Taemin forgets he has legs until he lands on them again and the floor hits his feet.

Taemin knows he’s happy, maybe too happy.

Because there’s Jingi hyung, smiling so hard his eyes have disappeared, watching them all.

“Good job, Taemin-ah, you’re the best, you did it, hyung is so proud of you,” he says nonsensically, scrubbing both his hands through Taemin’s hair and holding his face like he’s trying to make sure he remembers the Taemin in front of him. Taemin lets him, because he’s not sure he’ll be able to himself, he’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to look at this moment with time, if he’ll want to, even, if maybe it’ll shine too brightly.

And then he sees Jonghyun hyung, and his heart stops for a little while. Taemin stops for a little while.

Jonghyun hyung is crying his eyes out, arm wrenched over his face and body bent in on itself, where he’s hunkered down in the middle of the floor, sobbing and crying and Taemin doesn’t know what’s happening, what he’s supposed to do.

He goes over there, kicks Jonghyun hyung’s foot and gets down on his knees next to him.

“What are you crying for?” is definitely not what he should have said.

“Shit,” Jonghyun hyung mutters. He jerks his arm across his face and emerges and his eyes are shining with tears, and he’s almost smiling. “How come you aren’t? You’re making hyung look so lame.”

“Hyung, aren’t you happy?” Taemin says, and he doesn’t know why it’s so easy to talk to him right now, why it’s so easy to say the kinds of things he always keeps back. “You should be so happy right now, you were so awesome.”

“That’s why, Taeminnie. It’s been so long for me,” he gets out, and then he can’t talk anymore.

Taemin doesn’t get it until he puts his arms around him, leans against Jonghyun hyung’s side and folds Jonghyun hyung into him, and Jonghyun hyung makes him understand, gets his arms out from between them, cries it out into Taemin’s shoulder, clutches at Taemin’s back, his hair, holds Taemin so tightly everything else gets squeezed out and it’s just the two of them. He makes Taemin feel all the years it took to get them here, all the time they spent thinking about what “here” would mean, all the time they spent never talking to each other about it. And Taemin feels all that time, he does, exactly as much as Jonghyun hyung does, but right now it’s as light as air to him.

 

And somehow after all that, the five of them just end up in their room again.

The dorm hasn’t changed since the morning, and when they pile in and click on the lights and chase the shadows away, it’s just the same. Taemin didn’t expect anything else, but he wastes a few seconds worrying that Jonghyun hyung might have. Then Jonghyun hyung shuffles over to the couch and drops onto it, burying his face in the cushions, and instead of sitting on him this time, Taemin folds himself onto the floor next to him.

“Shower,” Kibum hyung says.

“Bed,” Jingi hyung agrees.

When Taemin’s turn comes, he’s fine never getting up again, but he goes, levering himself up by Jonghyun hyung’s dangling leg. When he climbs into his bed, he tries to figure out if he wants his blanket on or off, and he spends way too much time on that.

“You’ll just get hot if you leave it on, Taemin-ah,” Jingi hyung says to the ceiling. “Sometimes you throw it off onto me in your sleep, and I feel like I’m in an oven when I wake up.”

Oh. Okay.

“You’re the last person who should be complaining to Taeminnie,” Jonghyun hyung retorts from the doorway. He’s acting normal now, his scratchy voice the only sign left that today was special for him. “You know how much he puts up with from you, how many times he hasn’t slept because of you?”

“Me too, hyung,” Minho hyung interjects. “He does it to me, too.”

“Minho, too,” Jonghyun hyung says easily.

Jingi hyung retreats under his own blanket.

“You keep me up, too, hyung,” Taemin says, and Jonghyun hyung gapes at him. “You’re always moving around and making noise.”

“What is this?” Jonghyun hyung demands. “I stick up for you, and what? Now _I’m_ the problem?”

Taemin just laughs at him, and it clears him out, leaves him feeling more normal than he has in a month or two. Jonghyun hyung makes a big fuss climbing up to his bed, but he can’t quite hide his smile.

That’s it for a while, the end.

Then Kibum hyung says casually, “Taemin-ah, you never turn off the bathroom light.”

“Aigoo, how petty,” Jonghyun hyung cuts in, like Taemin’s betrayal never happened, and Taemin doesn’t know why he’s hiding his smile in his pillow.

Kibum hyung is ready. “Jonghyun hyung never flushes the toilet at night~”

“You mean that’s not normal?” Jonghyun hyung says, quick and kind of brittle, like he’s embarrassed but doesn’t think he should have to be. “I don't know about you, but I was taught that it’s considerate not to make a racket flushing when people are trying to sleep.”

“It’s even more considerate not to leave surprises for people to deal with in the morning,” Minho hyung says, and Jonghyun hyung must be giving him one of his many looks, because Minho hyung defends himself. “I’m always up first, hyung.”

“Minho, your alarm is annoying. You get up too early. You exercise too much,” Jonghyun hyung rattles off, because he’s lame like that. Then he adds, smirk in his voice, “Jingi hyung, make sure to sleep on your left side tonight~”

Kibum hyung squawks, then throws his words back in his face. “Aigoo, how petty~”

Jonghyun hyung has no defense, so he goes back to Jingi hyung. “Don’t you have anything to say, since you started it?”

“Hey, it’s still my turn,” Minho hyung protests, and Taemin didn’t realize there were rules, but whatever.

“Jonghyun hyung—“

“Me _again?”_

“Jonghyun hyung, sometimes you say really harsh things,” Minho hyung begins again, and then promptly goes on, “Jingi hyung, you’re not funny.”

And of course it’s the exact wrong thing to laugh at so they all crack up, driving Jingi hyung back under his blanket.

“Taeminnie, you don’t listen to people,” he says next, and this time Jonghyun hyung doesn’t defend him and Taemin is left wondering what that’s supposed to mean while Minho hyung moves on. “Kibum, Kibum-ah…” He clears his throat. “You’re bossy.”

“No one else got personal, but all right,” Kibum hyung says testily. “ _Minho-yah_ , you turn everything into a competition. You never know when to quit.”

Minho hyung splutters.

Kibum hyung says almost cautiously, “Look at you, getting mad over nothing.”

“Your skin is so thick you should be able to let some things go, _Kibum-ah,_ ” Minho hyung says loudly.

The air goes a little strange again, but Jingi hyung isn’t even watching them, and Jonghyun hyung isn’t saying anything either, so Taemin doesn’t worry about it, just waits until it passes.

Then Taemin says carefully, not looking anywhere, “Don’t you have anything to say about the rest of us, Jonghyun hyung?”

The mattress creaks above him. “Nope, just Minho.”

Taemin turns over to face the wall in case his face goes weird. “I have a lot of stuff I could say about you though~”

“Fine,” Jonghyun hyung shoots back. “Taemin-ah, you aren’t cute at all when you try to be mean. Also…Minho is right, you don’t listen.”

That again. Taemin doesn’t know why no one thinks he listens to them, if maybe they think listening is the same as understanding, or the same as just doing whatever they say. Maybe Taemin is overthinking, maybe it just really annoys Jonghyun hyung when Taemin gets stuck on the television, his phone, dancing, eating. The things that let him out.

“Taeminnie, you’re not mad at me, are you?” Jonghyun hyung says in a rush after it’s been half a minute.

“No,” Taemin tells him, because he’s not.

“Hyung lied, you’re always cute,” Jonghyun hyung tries.

He’s too easy. Taemin smiles like crazy because he’s so easy. “This is me not listening~”

Jonghyun hyung makes a low, frustrated noise that crawls under Taemin’s skin, but he leaves it.

And then Jingi hyung says, “My thing is…I want you guys to talk to me more. I can’t do my job if I don’t know what’s going on.”

And Jonghyun hyung immediately turns on Taemin again. “Taemin-ah, he’s talking about you. What do you have to say?”

Taemin doesn’t think so, but.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, Taeminnie,” Minho hyung says, trying to be nice.

Kibum hyung snorts. “Taeminnie, if you don’t say something now you never will.”

And there are so many things, so many, but Taemin can’t say any of them.

_Kibum hyung, you try to control everything I do, but I know you think you’re doing it for my own good. Jingi hyung, a lot of the stuff you try doesn’t work. It’s better when you don’t try so hard, but you probably know that, and you’re not doing it for yourself. Minho hyung, I know you have your own problems, don’t start worrying about mine instead. Jonghyun hyung…_

Jonghyun hyung.

_Jonghyun hyung, I want to become everything to you that you already are to me. If you keep being like this I’ll never be able to catch up. Please let me catch up._

“Sometimes I want to be left alone,” he says, and the silence that envelops him lasts for two whole minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, in the interest of storytelling and/or convenience I may have perpetrated two falsehoods that I need to get off my chest. Number one, afaik there were no photocards in their first mini, and number two, the performance where Taemin made a mistake was on Music Bank on 5/30/08, not their actual debut. There are probably a lot of other things I got wrong, but I knew better in these two cases and went ahead anyway haha. Such is fic.


End file.
